Chapter 150, The Cave Beyond the Mana Tide

Was there treasure inside the War Treant?

Clara Everhart was puzzled, but Spoon would not have reacted this strongly for no reason.

So she released a Blade Roller and ordered it to start cutting into the corpse.

The War Treant was already dead and had been thoroughly burned, which made it much easier to saw through than before.

At least the Blade Roller’s chainsaw chain was no longer being ruined by the effort.

Whirrrr.

The spinning blade steadily cut deeper into the trunk.

“Squeak!”

Just as the chainsaw was about to reach the center, Spoon suddenly cried out.

Clara immediately ordered the Blade Roller to stop.

She leaned closer and peered into the cut, but everything inside was charred black. She could not see anything useful.

So she had the Blade Roller start cutting again.

This time, instead of cutting straight down, it shaved sideways through the trunk in thin horizontal layers.

After removing the outer charcoal and part of the inner wood, Clara finally saw what had been hidden inside.

A small, vibrant green branch.

There were even several fresh leaves growing from it.

[War Treant Sapling, ?]

[Uses, ???]

[Description, ???]

“Oh?”

Clara’s eyes lit up.

The rest might still be question marks, but that did not matter.

The name alone told her enough.

A sapling.

Something that could be planted.

If she took these back and planted them around her shelter, wouldn’t that be the same as growing a whole group of War Treants nearby?

Clara had no idea whether the treants could eventually be tamed like Steel Wool and Spoon and made to work for her.

But if she could kill them once, she could kill them twice.

That was hardly an insurmountable problem.

A person had to dream a little.

What if it actually worked?

Clara licked her lips.

Her movements immediately became much less cautious.

She released nine Blade Rollers and started logging.

One War Treant corpse after another was cut open.

Originally, Clara had expected the saplings to be extremely rare.

Instead, every single War Treant had one inside.

A few even contained two.

A double-yolk bonus.

Could this be how War Treants reproduced?

If Clara had never discovered the saplings, would they have fallen to the ground after she left, taken root, and eventually grown into new War Treants?

If that was true, then no matter how many times someone conquered this place, the War Treants would simply continue the cycle and return again.

Tsk, tsk.

From the perspective of preserving the species, a system where every death became a new beginning was almost perfect.

And because there was even a small chance of producing two saplings from one treant, the population could gradually expand as well.

But now...

All seventy or eighty of these saplings belonged to Clara!

Naturally, she did not ignore the magical beast crystal cores or any other useful materials from the War Treants.

She sent all of them to Simon Caldwell.

This time, however, she specifically told him to store everything for her.

She might need those materials once she returned to her shelter.

Simon had no objection.

If there was one thing he had plenty of, it was warehouse space.

Still...

Moon, [You’re still outside?]

Tower, [Yeah. I happened to find a really good place and picked up quite a few useful things. I’m still exploring.]

Clara stared at Simon Caldwell’s seemingly out-of-nowhere question for a moment, then answered honestly.

Moon, [Impressive. I always thought you were cautious. Turns out you’re even more willing to risk your life for profit than I am.]

Tower, [Hm?]

Sun, [Isn’t the Mana Tide happening right now? If you’re not inside your shelter, where are you?]

Tower, [Wait, what do you mean it’s already the Mana Tide?]

Clara froze when she saw Ingrid’s message.

She quickly did the math.

There should still be another day before the Mana Tide arrived.

She had plenty of time to get back.

So how had it already started?

Had she miscalculated the date?

[...]

The moment everyone in the group saw Clara’s reply, they responded with rows of ellipses.

Tower, [Seriously. I don’t feel the Mana Tide at all where I am. [Image] [Image] [Image]]

Clara took several photos and sent them into the group.

High Priestess, [How is that possible?]

Hierophant, [That shouldn’t happen.]

Judgment, [Where exactly are you right now?]

Owen Clark asked the question everyone wanted answered.

Tower, [Inside a cavern in the Forsaken Mountains.]

Justice, [First time I’ve heard of someone tanking a Mana Tide out in the open.]

Sun, [No, she isn’t tanking it. Didn’t you see what Tower said? There’s no Mana Tide where she is.]

Chariot, [Judging from the photos, aside from the areas damaged by the fighting, everything else really does look completely unaffected by the Mana Tide.]

Magician, [There isn’t even any snow?]

Fool, [Forget snow. It looks like spring. It barely even looks like the Kalim Continent.]

High Priestess, [Haha. Tower already said she’s inside a cave.]

High Priestess, [Wait. Why is there sunlight inside a cave?]

Emperor, [This is starting to sound like you stumbled into a dungeon.]

A dungeon?

Now that Becca Goodwin had said it, Clara suddenly felt that the comparison was surprisingly accurate.

The only difference was that dungeons usually had a boss.

So far, this place only seemed to have elite mobs.

Death, [I encountered something similar not long after we were first transported here.]

High Priestess, [Whoa. Death actually joined the discussion for once.]

Henry Vale rarely participated in conversations like this, so Vivian Nádasdy Bathory reacted dramatically.

And she was not the only one.

The others were clearly surprised as well.

Magician, [Stop messing around. Death, keep going.]

Death, [That time Tower asked me to collect herbs from the volcano in the Forsaken Mountains. I encountered a colony of magical beasts inside. I was focused entirely on fighting and ended up missing my chance to return before nightfall...]

Why was this suddenly about her?

Still, Clara vaguely remembered that incident.

After thinking for a moment, she recalled what had happened.

But...

Tower, [I remember you only stayed there overnight. What does that have to do with the Mana Tide?]

Death, [That’s exactly my point. That night, aside from the magical beasts already living inside the volcano, there were no other magical beasts around me. Even at the entrance, outside creatures only wandered nearby. None of them entered. That led me to a theory.]

Magician, [A theory?]

High Priestess, [Wasn’t that simply because a volcano is an extreme environment? Magical beasts of incompatible attributes probably wouldn’t want to enter.]

Death, [Yes. That is exactly the point. An extreme environment. Or, to put it in terms everyone here can understand, the mana concentration inside was higher than outside. That may be why other magical beasts couldn’t, or simply didn’t want to, enter.]

Sun, [You mean Tower’s current location might also have a mana concentration higher than the Mana Tide outside?]

Star, [That sounds more like one of the natural laws of the Kalim Continent.]

Tower, [I have no idea. But the Witch Set you made for me seems to stop working properly in here. The temperature-control enchantment is the most obvious. It feels like it isn’t doing anything at all.]